Friday, August 18, 2017

RKSF Developer Diary #2 - Hey, That's New!

Just one pipe, huh?
Well, at least we have infinite time.

...And we're back!

In our last Developer Diary entry, we had a look at some of the changes made during the localization of the original Rosenkreuzstilette that we carried over to the English version of Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel. This time around, we'll be looking at some of the little tweaks in the English version of Freudenstachel that you'd be forgiven for not noticing.

To start things off, let's pay a visit to everyone's favorite pajama-clad shut-in, Schwer-Muta Casasola Merkle. While her Metalman-inspired "The Black Playground" stage featured a brief homage to Super Mario Bros., Freudenstachel's "The Zeppy Ruins" goes even further with its tribute to the Mushroom Kingdom, featuring blue skies, sentient clouds oddly resembling a certain cephalopod, marching mushrooms, blocks, pipes, and even a flagpole and fort at the "end" of the stage. With the presentation practically screaming Super Mario All-Stars, it goes without saying that we just had to match the presentation of the 16-bit version of the retro classic, reusing the Super Mario 64 font from the original RKS as appropriate.

It looks like someone forgot the ball
finial on the top of the flagpole...

Amusingly enough, there are a few minor oversights in this segment that made their way into the final version of the game. First off, the flag and flagpole are white and green, respectively, in the original version of Super Mario Bros., whereas their colors are reversed in the Super Mario All-Stars remake. Curiously, the Freudenstachel rendition uses the NES color scheme. Since the background is modeled after the All-Stars version, the flag unintentionally appears to fade into the clouds.

For the English version of Freudenstachel, we added a subtle gray edge to the flag itself to help it stand out against the background. If you have a decent monitor, you don't even need to expand the image to the left to notice the difference. Should we have reversed the colors instead and made the stage consistently follow suit with All-Stars, or do you think this understated tweak a better solution? Let us know in the comments below.

For obvious reasons, we also updated the "World 1-8" to reflect that this is effectively Rosenkreuzstilette 2. Was it necessary? Not it all. Was it worth it? For anyone who notices the little touches in their games: absolutely.

Message From Mr. Zeppy.

Once we begin exploring the depths of the Zeppy Ruins, a familiar face can be found carved in the walls alongside a message written in archaic script.

Wait, did I just say "archaic"? I take that back. It's retro, not archaic...

Anyway, well-seasoned gamers may recognize the images of a top, a shuriken, and a needle at the bottom of the mural as the icons of particular armaments in the Blue Bomber's arsenal: namely, the Top Spin, the Shadow Blade, and the Needle Cannon from Megaman 3. The inscription itself is modeled after the transmissions sent by Dr. Light whenever the good doctor completes one of his new inventions in Megaman 2.

It was a bit of a challenge to get the wording of the English rendition just right, accurately conveying the meaning of the riddle on the wall while preserving the nods to both games. The screenshot to the right depicts the "question" that the player needs to solve in order to proceed. An "answer" engraving can be found two screens away from this one (of course, if you find it, that likely means that you chose poorly and cost Freudia her life...).

For a second, these two screenshots looked
like they had naturally merged together...

Let's skip ahead a considerable bit and check out Schirach's Sandstorm Stage. Naturally, the Count Bombs in this stage are modeled after their explosive counterparts from Megaman 6. Curiously, WOMI decided to take the seven incarnations of the upright bomb, rotate all seven sprites, one at a time, to create the other three detonator variants, and apply shading and highlights to all thirty-five sprites individually.

For the English version of RKSF, we decided to remake the Count Bomb graphics, keeping the timer facing the same direction no matter where its detonator was located. The reason for this change was two-fold. First, the source material always had the timers facing the same direction; it's only appropriate that the RKSF renditions follow suit. Second, graphic designers in video games have a responsibility to ensure that all graphical elements are user-friendly and easily-legible. For example, when you look at an HP gauge, you should be able to figure out how much HP you have in an instant. In this case, the fraction of a second needed to tilt your head and read the timers properly could mean the difference between the bombs exploding in your face or not.

Whoa, it's past midnight already? It looks like I spent too much time gathering screenshots for this post. Well, I'll just have to wrap things up here for now.

In the next Developer Diary, we'll be meeting the new members of the Rosenkreuzstilette universe. See you then!

8 comments:

Oh my... I never realized that the owner of the restaurant you go to just died. I feel really sorry for you, TDOMMX. It must be hard for you, losing someone who was that friendly to you... Please, let me say these words for you: "May she rest in peace."

I'm kinda torn on how to go about with the Zeppy flag. So far I'm leaning towards the All-Stars route for the consistency of the reference to that game, though the reversed colors do kinda remind me of the insignia of Luigi's hat which is kinda fitting since Freudia is kinda like the Luigi of this game to Spiritia's Mario from the first RosenkreuzStilette with the Super Mario Bros. references in Schwer-Muta's stage.

Several complain about the update. Personally I don't like the additional job did to the suddenly BGM/voice volume drop in several situations including boss dialogue. It also made a track (mainly the track before Count Zeppelin fight) hard to be heard. The rest are really good; but sometimes I'm troubled with this part of stuff since it gives people used to original version a quite disorientation feelings.

I've asked our publisher to share their revised source code with us so I can personally troubleshoot any new issues that may have been unwittingly introduced during their round of bugfixes. They partially ported some of these fixes to the Japanese version, too, so there's a possibility that all Steam versions of the game are affected and not just the English one (the original Japanese launch was verbatim v1.06b)...

Site Introduction

Where in the world are you? I'm glad you asked! Welcome to Schwer and Schwer Alike, the main English blog site for all things Rosenkreuzstilette (RKS for short). RKS is a Mega Man clone doujin game created by [erka:es] and is a much-needed piece of work in a world where Capcom won't release Mega Man Universe or Legends 3.

Formerly a duo, [erka:es] is currently a one-man show run by WOMI, the series main artist. There's a link below to their main website, if you're so inclined, and if you're interested, you can try the game's English demo or purchase it at DLSite (link below)! The possibilities are endless!